The Grave of Truth (4 page)

‘What did he do?' Max whispered.

‘Only the Führer knows,' the Standartenführer said. ‘We carried out his orders. I would have killed him myself but I have the Führer's own command. He wants him executed and he wants you to carry out the sentence. “The future of Germany depends on the children.” Those were his words. “Let the Hitler Jügend shoot him. Let them see what happens to traitors.”'

‘He's injured,' Max whispered.

He saw the SS officer smile. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘but if he can't stand up we'll shoot him in a chair. You get back to your squad now; Oberst Frink will take you above ground and show you the place. He'll be brought up in a few minutes.'

He turned back into the room and closed the door. Without thinking Max began to run down the corridor. He found the SS Obersturmführer barring his way; the squad of boys was ranged up behind him.

‘Line up!' he shouted. As Max hesitated he pushed him. They moved off behind the SS Leutnant, clattering up the two flights of stairs that brought them to ground level.

The discipline of his training in the Hitler Jügend kept Max Steiner on his feet, made him give orders to the rest of the squad and stopped him giving way to the impulse to turn and run from the whole nightmare. And it was a nightmare, a sequence so horrible that it was almost unreal. He saw a plain chair standing in the enclosed garden where they were waiting; the air was thick with smoke and the cinders of fires floated down on them in a light breeze. The noise of explosions was joined by the rattle of shots from street-fighting in the distance. He glanced over his head and saw a flight of birds high above, winging away. They were not just being sent out to die for their country, the frightened children of Berlin, the Pauls and Erwins and little Fritz Kluge who was clinging on to his rifle and staring ahead like a terrified rabbit. They were being ordered to kill a man in cold blood. The Führer's personal order. The Führer hadn't come to see them, to give lunatics like Albert Kramer something to die happy remembering. He had chosen them to kill a man who hadn't been tried, and whose treason was just a word to be accepted.

He closed his eyes, fighting himself and his panic and revulsion. His family were all National Socialists; his elder brother had won the Iron Cross 1st class for bombing raids on England. As a child he had grown up with the idea of Adolf Hitler as the saviour of Germany, the leader with mystical powers who had brought his people out of the chaos and humiliation of the years after the Great War and set them on their path of destiny. A strong Germany, a pure Aryan super-race whose mission was to rule the world. His father and his mother and his brothers had accepted that, and so had he. The marches, the rallies, the torchlight processions, the marvellous victories, the films glorifying war and sacrifice—nobody questioned that everything their Führer did was right, certainly not Max.

When adversity came, and the war closed in upon them bringing the dreadful air raids which destroyed cities like Cologne or engulfed Hamburg in a holocaust of fire, the people of Germany responded with courage and determination, just as his own family had done when their three menfolk were killed. Max wore the black armband that showed that Steiners had given their lives for the Fatherland, and was proud while he grieved. There had been nobility as well as suffering, and through it all the belief that the Führer would not fail, that the army's reverses were the failure of the generals to carry out his orders. With the shells falling on Berlin itself, part of the myth survived. But the reality was sending children out to die and, now, commanding that they become his personal executioners. They had brought the victim out; he used the word unconsciously.

The Standartenführer and an SS trooper were dragging him between them; he stumbled and staggered till they pushed him into the chair.

‘You—cadre leader—come over here!'

Max didn't want to move; he stood as if he were paralysed, and then unwillingly his legs obeyed, and he found himself standing close to the man who was to be shot, with the two SS men confronting him.

‘You know what to do?'

He looked up into the Standartenführer's face: it was gaunt and grim, but all he could remember was that brief, hateful smile … The condemned man was conscious; his eyes were open. They had wiped his face clean but a rim of blood showed between his lips. Now he had been tied to the chair. He wore civilian trousers and a shirt which was torn and bloodstained.

Max kept on staring at him; he felt his eyes filling with tears.

‘You know what to do—answer me, you stupid little clod!'

‘No,' Max said, and his voice sounded very loud.

‘You give the order: “Take aim, fire.” If he's still alive you shoot him through the head.'

Max heard him dimly, as if he were shouting from a long way away. The man in the chair was looking at him. Not a young man, because his hair was turning grey. The eyes were agonized. They reminded Max of the expression in the eyes of a crucified Christ he had seen during a visit to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. It had haunted him for nights afterwards. Then slowly the bleeding lips opened; the words were spoken directly to him.

‘Janus … Find Janus …'

Max wasn't sure which of the SS men hit the man; he saw the blow, and the fresh blood, and suddenly he was shouting at them.

‘No … no … no!'

The world rocked under his feet, tears blinded him, and a punch to the head sent him sprawling. He saw what happened afterwards as if it were a series of scenes from a film that kept breaking down. He saw Albert Kramer come out of the ranks; he was dragged to one side and somebody kicked him. Then he heard the shots which seemed to go on for ever. The man in the chair fell over. Then Max became unconscious.

He heard the voices from a distance; they came and went at first while he struggled back to consciousness. ‘Poor devil—no, he's alive—' ‘Christ, that one was close—here, help me …'

Someone was dragging him by the arms, he opened his eyes and saw the sky, rent by scudding clouds, and his ears buzzed from the shell which had just exploded nearby. Then the sky disappeared and there was grey concrete over his head and he was being helped to stand. An SS Scharführer supported him; a uniformed police guard was beside him.

‘You all right, son?' The Scharführer asked him.

Max nodded; his head and the side of his face were throbbing. He remembered that savage punch that had knocked him to the ground. He had been kicked too; breathing sent shafts of pain over his ribs.

‘We saw you out there,' the police guard said, ‘and we thought you'd caught a shell splinter. One of the HJs going to Pichelsdorf, weren't you?'

‘Yes,' Max mumbled. ‘They shot the man …' He put his hands over his face and began to cry. The SS Scharführer glanced at the police guard.

‘Come on, son,' he said. ‘You've just got a bit of concussion, that's all. Think yourself lucky you got knocked out and didn't get to bloody Pichelsdorf—suicide squad, that was—come on, we'll take you downstairs.'

‘I'm on duty in the watchtower,' the police guard said. ‘All I see is the Red bastards getting closer every minute. Take the kid below; he looks green.…'

Max had recognized his surroundings as they talked; he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and choked back more tears. They were in the porch under the exit from the Bunker. Outside was the garden where the man had been executed.

‘Mind the steps,' the Scharführer said. ‘You're not going to puke, are you?'

‘No,' Max mumbled. ‘No, I'm all right.' The stairs seemed to go down and down; they had been comparatively few when he had hurried up them with his squad in the early morning. At the foot of the stairs they were met by three SS officers, headed by a man wearing the insignia of a Sturmbannführer.

‘What are you doing?' he shouted to the Scharführer who was ahead of Max, and the man snapped to attention.

‘Carrying out orders, sir.'

‘All exits into the garden are closed?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘What's that boy doing?'

‘We found him lying outside—he's all right, just got a knock on the head.'

Max watched the Sturmbannführer's face; it was haggard and the lips quivered; there was a look of frenzy in the eyes.

‘Get him away from here—at once! This corridor is to be kept clear!'

The SS Scharführer saluted and grabbed Max by the arm, hurrying him forward. He saw two doors on the right of them as they hastened through a long wide room with chairs and a long table and wall maps. The second door was partly open, and he glimpsed the black uniforms of the SS inside. He had an impression of a blanket-shrouded figure being held by two men, but even as they passed the door was slammed shut, and by now the Scharführer was forcing him into a run.

They came out of the long room which looked as if it were used for conferences and into another room of the same size: it was full of people, men in uniform, women wearing the military-style garb of the female SS staff. Nobody looked at Max or seemed to notice him; faces were dazed and no one spoke. Two women, one of them young and pretty, wept without making any sound or attempt to check the tears which streamed down their faces. Max was hustled through them and to another flight of stairs; his head was quite clear now and he recognized the route he and the squad had taken earlier; through the dining area of the upper Bunker, past the passage and the storeroom where he had seen the executed man for the first time. They reached the bulkhead before a shorter flight of steps, and at the top of these they came into a room which was also full of people.

‘Stay here,' the Scharführer said. ‘Ilse, come and look after this one; get some of that liquor they've been hiding in the kitchen.'

‘You hurt?' The girl was in civilian dress, a brown skirt and a white blouse; she had fair hair severely pinned back in a bun and her face was very pale, with puffy skin under the eyes. Max shook his head.

‘No. What's happening? Why is everyone in here—that other room below was full of people … I saw some of them crying.…' He caught hold of her arm. ‘Is the war over? Have we surrendered?'

She had a glass in her hand and was pouring wine into it. She drank some herself before giving the glass to him, and wiped her pale lips with the back of her hand. ‘Don't say that word,' she said. ‘Not till we know for sure he's dead. You must have come up through the Führer Bunker. Did you see anything?' She was watching him closely, speaking very low.

‘They were clearing the corridor and closing all the doors outside,' he said. ‘I thought I saw somebody dead, wrapped up in one room, but they slammed the door—'

She gave a deep sigh, and suddenly her eyes were filled with tears. ‘He said good-bye to us all last night,' she said. ‘He came and shook hands with us. We knew what it meant. Somebody started a gramophone in the canteen and we began to dance. It was about three in the morning—I work in the kitchens here, doing the catering. Do you know, one of the senior officers in his bodyguard—a Standartenführer—he danced with me? I knew it was the end then. Everything was breaking up.…' She caught hold of Max by the shoulders. ‘You don't understand me, do you? You don't know what I'm talking about?' Her hands dropped away from him. ‘The Führer's dead,' she said. ‘If they're closing everything up like that, and you saw a body—those rooms are his private suite. Him and Eva Braun. She came here to die with him.' She took the glass away from Max and poured more wine into it. Again she drank half herself.

‘It's all over,' she said. ‘Now we can make peace, while there's anyone left alive—my husband's fighting with General Wenck's army. We kept hoping they'd come to Berlin and drive back the Ivans, but they didn't … I expect my man's dead anyway. I haven't had a letter for weeks—” She paused; it was as if she had been talking to herself rather than him. Now she looked at him as a person, and hesitantly touched the bruised and swollen side of his face.

‘That's nasty,' she said. ‘What are you doing down here—we haven't any HJs on our staff—'

‘Our cadre were sent for last night,' Max answered. ‘We thought we were going to see the Führer, before we went to fight at Pichelsdorf—he didn't come. There was a man shot this morning—'

‘That's what we heard,' Ilse said. ‘Someone said he was caught with E.B.'s diamonds, getting ready to run. Listen, where's your home?'

‘My mother lives on Albrechtstrasse; I want to get back and see she's all right. How can I get out of here?'

‘Stick close to me,' the girl said. ‘Now that the Führer's dead there's nothing to stay for—not to get caught by the Ivans. The Scharführer's a friend of mine'—she looked briefly sly—‘the one who brought you up here. Josef Franke, that's his name. They're shooting all the SS, as they capture them. Josef's not going to get himself caught by them.… Some of us are going to try and run for it. I'll ask him if you can come along.'

‘I want to get home,' Max insisted.

Someone had come up behind him. He was a tall, thin young man in the uniform of a Luftwaffe staff officer. ‘And where's home, cadre leader?'

‘Albrechtstrasse, sir. My mother and grandmother are there.'

The thin man shook his head. ‘No good trying to get there,' he said. ‘The Russians have got control of the whole section. They broke through to Schöneberg this morning. If you're found on the streets in that uniform you'll be shot dead.' He moved away. ‘Albrechtstrasse'—Max heard someone else say it—‘there's not a house left standing. We got a message from the Volksturm commander before they surrendered. Poor old devils, there were just a handful of them left.'

He felt Ilse's thin arm go round him. ‘Never mind,' she murmured. ‘Never mind—it's the same for all of us. You come with Josef and me.…' Max leaned his head against her narrow bosom and wept for the loss of his family and his home. By five o'clock that evening, his olive-green Hitler Jugend uniform exchanged for an ill-fitting assortment of civilian clothes, Max Steiner crept out through the vast ruined Chancellory building, with Ilse and Franke, now wearing army uniform, and some of the clerks and domestic staff from the Bunker and the Foreign Office who had taken shelter there. As they left the shattered building, its marble and malachite walls cracked and crumbling from Allied bombs and Russian shellfire, the group of fugitives noticed, without realizing the significance, two thick black columns of smoke rising from the Chancellory gardens. They came from the petrol fire that provided Germany's Führer and his lover Eva Braun with their Viking funeral.